I honestly don't know what to think about all of this. I am a new graduate student at Berkeley, and my perspective is undoubtedly a little apathetic because of this: my department pays my tuition, I haven't been here long enough to experience any substantial cuts in services I use, and the (private) institution I attended as an undergraduate had tuition rates that were around $15k per semester by the time I left. Things look pretty darn good to me at Berkeley right now, and frankly I was a bit annoyed when, upon arriving at campus yesterday, I realized that someone had intentionally pulled a bunch of fire alarms, forcing me and my colleagues to wait outside in the pouring rain.
I can certainly sympathize with the feeling that the university broke a promise to students and staff, and that this is worthy of anger. I think providing a free, or nearly free, top notch public education is a worthy goal. It does seem stupid that basic services and staff are being cut but new construction projects are going forward. But I am not yet convinced that these protests were the right way to bring attention to these issues, and I feel that the harm, inconvenience, and cost that they visited on others was somewhat self-defeating.
I wish I had a better solution to offer, but at the moment all I can think of is a meta-solution: there are a lot of smart people at Berkeley -- why not pose the problem to them, in great detail, and invite them to come up with creative ways to raise money or reduce spending? A lot of what the protesters object to, I think, is the feeling that decisions are being imposed on them. Why not instead let us (every individual department, say) make the decisions about what to cut ourselves, with the stipulation that if we don't reduce costs enough, fees will go up accordingly?
I can certainly sympathize with the feeling that the university broke a promise to students and staff, and that this is worthy of anger. I think providing a free, or nearly free, top notch public education is a worthy goal. It does seem stupid that basic services and staff are being cut but new construction projects are going forward. But I am not yet convinced that these protests were the right way to bring attention to these issues, and I feel that the harm, inconvenience, and cost that they visited on others was somewhat self-defeating.
I wish I had a better solution to offer, but at the moment all I can think of is a meta-solution: there are a lot of smart people at Berkeley -- why not pose the problem to them, in great detail, and invite them to come up with creative ways to raise money or reduce spending? A lot of what the protesters object to, I think, is the feeling that decisions are being imposed on them. Why not instead let us (every individual department, say) make the decisions about what to cut ourselves, with the stipulation that if we don't reduce costs enough, fees will go up accordingly?